


Collision Course

by shopfront



Category: Dark Angel, Dollhouse
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Pre-Femslash, post-epitaph one, post-freak nation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-03
Updated: 2010-04-03
Packaged: 2017-10-08 16:16:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/pseuds/shopfront
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max's search for Professor Sandeman, and Mag and Caroline's search for Safe Haven, collide. (Post-Epitaph One and Freak Nation)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collision Course

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alixtii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alixtii/gifts).



> Warnings continued: major character death is offscreen, general background violence.

"Go, go, go!" Zone yelled between bursts of gunfire. "Take Caroline and find shelter, I'll hold them off until I can break for cover!"

"But, Zone-" Mag started, but Caroline was already tugging her away, grim understanding settling oddly over her young face.

"I told you to get out of here!"

"Don't make this harder for him," Caroline hissed up at her. "The sooner we leave, the better his chances. We need all the head-start he can give us."

Mag let the resistance slip from her body and let Caroline tug her along, but she couldn't stop looking back for Zone. Even when all she could see was the flare of gunshots against the night; even when the support of Caroline's shoulder jammed into her side wasn't enough to stop her from stumbling on her wounded leg, and she had to keep her eyes fixed on the ground to keep from falling, she couldn't stop listening for him. For a death cry or simply silence, she didn't know which, but she was so fixated on listening for it that she didn't hear them coming until Caroline cried out in surprise.

Her yell gave Mag just enough time to look up, see the Butchers almost upon them and contemplate the value of prayer. But before they could be cut down, a black clad figure practically materialised out of the night and launched itself directly between them and the Butchers, and settled into a fighting pose. For once Mag reacted before Caroline, half carrying her in their scramble for cover to the tune of dull thuds and groans.

They stumbled to a halt not too far off their original path when Mag's leg gave way beneath her, and they collapsed on the ground to wait and hope for the sounds the stop.

*** * ***

"Hey, whatever you do, don't shoot!" Mag and Caroline started when a female voice cut through the stillness of the night. "I'm not going to hurt you, you can come back out now."

Mag and Caroline cautiously poked their heads up over the edge of the shallow ditch they'd crawled into, but there was nothing to see except a female figure with long hair bent over the prone body of a Butcher.

"Do we trust her?" Mag whispered.

"I don't think we have any other choice," Caroline pointed out at normal volume, and stood up, holding out a hand to help Mag stand.

"Did you kill them?" Caroline asked the stranger as soon as they got close enough.

"One or two, but not all of them."

"Pity," Caroline muttered. "They would have been better off dead."

The woman shot an odd look at Caroline and opened her mouth, but Mag cut her off first.

"And where did you come from?" she gasped as she released Caroline and grimly clutched at an old, bent sign-post pole for support instead.

"I was heading for the city when I heard the sound of fighting," the woman answered blithely as she picked her way across the bodies, kicking them just to be sure they were out and carefully collecting any useful weapons they had on them. "I thought I'd see what was going on, maybe lend a hand."

"I'm Caroline, and this is Mag," Caroline piped up, sounding like a child trying to act tough, and Mag couldn't help but chuckle as the woman's eyebrows went up.

"Hi Caroline," she replied in a cheery voice as Mag struggled to turn a laugh into a cough. "I'm Max, it's nice to meet you." Then she crouched down and held out her hand.

"Oh this body sucks," Caroline said with a huff and rolled her eyes, but she still shook the offered hand. "How can I expect anybody to take me seriously when I look like this. I can't even fight properly, all I can do is run and scream like a baby. I miss being able to defend myself."

Max tilted her head at Caroline in confusion at the same time as Caroline's eyes went a little wide and Mag swore.

"I really need to stop forgetting about the fear of printeds," Caroline groaned.

"Don't hurt her," Mag cried, reaching a hand protectively out towards where Caroline was standing.

"Why would I do that?" Max snapped back, stepping away from Caroline and holding up her empty hands in front of her.

"She's not a threat to you, I promise," Mag insisted

"I'm really not, not like this," Caroline piped up, ignoring the fact that she was obviously carrying at least one gun.

"What's that even supposed to mean? You're a kid."

"I mean, yeah, she's printed, but it's different. You don't need to freak out about it or anything," Mag continued as she slowly shifted her weight against the pole to get her gun hand free without losing her footing.

"Hey, you really don't want to do that," Max said, shifting her attention to Mag and frowning. "I'm unarmed, see? Now why on earth would I want to hurt her for being… what was it you said, printed?"

Caroline and Mag paused, and looked at each other in confusion.

"Are you an actual?" Mag finally asked hesitantly.

"Am I a _what_?"

Mag shook her head like that would clear away the oddness of this situation by shaking her head, but Max's expression didn't change.

"Undo the top of that suit," Caroline piped up, causing Max's eyebrows to once again sky rocket.

"Now look kid, there ain't no way-"

"We just need to see your birthmark," Mag cut her off with a sigh, and then blinked as her whole expression shifted.

"You mean my barcode?" Max asked, her stance shifting, become alert instead of confused, and her eyes felt like they were boring into Mag's own. Mag flicked a quick look at Caroline, who just shrugged as if to say 'I have no damn idea either,' so Mag nodded once.

"Yes, your barcode," she said, and Max nodded and spun around, but she didn't reach for her zipper. Instead she swept away her long black hair aside to reveal the sharp outline of a barcode tattoo.

"Okay, now I'm confused," Mag said and threw up her hands.

"You're not the only one," Caroline muttered. "What's so important about a barcode tattoo?"

Max dropped her hair and turned back around to stare quizzically at them.

"Don't people watch the news down here or something?"

"News?" Caroline barked out a laugh. "Like on a television, seriously?"

"Yeah, news, on a television. What's so special about that?"

"That's tech," Mag said, her tone flat. "People here stay away from tech."

"Huh," Max said, and then shrugged. "Okay, so people do things a lot more differently down here than I expected. Either way, we need to move, so pick out anything useful you want from this and let's go," she finished with a kick to the pile of the Butcher's weapons.

"We can't go, we have to check to see if Zone… if he's-"

"If he's dead or not," Caroline finished for her, leaning over to grip Mag's hand to try and lessen the blow. "We owe him that," she said, and Mag squeezed her hand back.

"You mean the guy with the firepower?" Max said and jerked a thumb back in the direction of where Zone had been fighting. "He took all of these guys friends with him, but he went down before I reached you. I'm sorry."

Mag yanked away from Caroline's grasp and spun on her heel, staggering away a few steps and holding a clenched fist against her chest as if it could release the tightness in her chest.

She was the last one left from her group. The last one, alone.

"Wait, how could you have seen that from near here?" Mag heard Caroline questioning Max, but it all sounded tinny and distant, so she paid it little mind.

"I have good eyesight."

"Nobody has eyesight that good."

"Yeah, well, I do. Look, I'm sorry about your friend, but we can't stay here. I can help you get as far from here as we can manage tonight, but then I have to head into the city-"

Mag's head snapped up at that.

"And I got the impression that you were being chased out of it or something, so I'm guessing you do want to go that way with me."

"Are you insane?" Mag cried, and started to take a step towards Max but then thought better of it and simply planted her bad leg down as steadily as she could. "You can't get into the city, you'll be killed. We barely got out! There's Butchers everywhere, and all the decent entry points are blocked off."

"These the guys you call butchers?" Max asked, nodding a head at the fallen bodies.

"Yes, they're totally inhuman, crazy, killing machines-"

"They are pretty feral, and not exactly easy to evade," Caroline broke in.

"And they'll sniff you out wherever you go."

"If you can survive out here," Caroline finished for them, "then you should. It's much safer."

Max looked back and forth between them, examining their faces closely.

"I can't do that, I have to find someone. It's important. But if these guys are as crazy as you say, I'm guessing they won't stay down, so we still might want to be long gone before some of them wake up. Here-" Max walked to side of the highway and fished a backpack out from behind a bush, and rummaged in it for a second to pull out a bandage roll. "That looks like a nasty cut, I can probably make it a bit more bearable for you."

She knelt at Mag's side and Mag didn't protest, so she rolled her pants leg up to the knee and started wrapping the bandage firmly around her calf, carefully holding a wad of bandage over the cut.

"So, who you looking for?" Caroline asked idly, finally picking through the pile of knifes and guns Max had tossed together.

"A guy called Professor Sandeman, I don't suppose either of you have heard of him?" Max asked as she worked, though there wasn't much of a question in her voice. She didn't look surprised when Mag and Caroline gave echoing no's, either. "I didn't think so. All I know is that he's at some place called Safe Haven and I have to start in L.A. if I want to find it."

Mag couldn't help herself, she started at the sound of that name, and Max was on her feet in a second.

"You just jumped, does that mean something to you? Do you know what Safe Haven is? Please, it's really important."

"It's a really long story that you don't seem to know much about already, so let's just boil it down to this: if you want to find Safe Haven, you need to follow me," Caroline said, eyeing them both over the knife she was examining.

"You? You're just a kid. This place has been around for years."

"I hate this body," Caroline sighed. "Look, it's all to do with the tech. There was a signal, and now any kind of technology can potentially be used to wipe people. Or to put one person into another person's body."

"That sounds insane, why wouldn't we have heard about that? I mean, we have plenty of tech up north."

"You got me. Long story short though, I'm older than I look."

"You said, a signal?" Max said slowly. "I live in Seattle. Up there I've only heard about the Pulse, and that only fried electrical equipment and computers and stuff, it didn't do anything to people."

"What, like an electromagnetic pulse?" Caroline said, eyes wide.

"Yeah, exactly, it-"

One the Butchers shifted and let out a soft sigh, as if waking from a gentle sleep. All three of them froze and stared at him, but before Mag could formulate the words to speak, Max was by his side and throwing a blow towards his head that made him lie still again.

"That was close," Caroline said.

"We should go," Mag said and nodded, reaching down to tuck the trailing end of the bandage into the top of the wrap.

"Exactly what I've been saying," Max huffed. "We'll sort this out when we're far enough away to make camp." Then she swung the backpack up on her shoulder and started walking determinedly up the highway.

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of the [jamponygifts](http://community.livejournal.com/jamponygifts) 2009 Dark Angel holiday gift exchange. This is currently a prequel to an unfinished and unposted Mag/Max work.


End file.
